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Re: Plants for Goldfish Aquarium



On Friday, 7 July 1995, Shaji Bhaskar wrote:

> The fluorescent light and neutral to hard water parts are easy,
> goldfish are not.  They are vegetarian by nature and eat most plants.
> 
> You could try something really tough and distatsteful, like Anubias,
> Java fern or Hornwort, but I can't guarantee success.

I'd recommend crypts, Anubias, Java fern, and Java moss, but not Hornwort,
which is a prefered food of my gouramis and which may be palatable to
goldfish as well.  My extremely herbivorous Abramites hypselonotus,
banned from the 135g display tank for grazing the plants to the gravel,
takes one or two bites out of each crypt leaf and then leaves the plant
alone.  This is the same fish that ate the top half of each Java fern leaf,
so crypts must really taste terrible.  I've never seen anything eat Java moss,
although the gouramis pick at it from time to time, possibly to get at uneaten
food that gets trapped in it.  A fast-growing plant like Giant Val might be
able to keep ahead of the goldfish.  Unfortunately, goldfish tend to
uproot everything in a tank, so the possibilities are limited.
--
Kevin Conlin   kcconlin at cae_ca   "We're Canadians.  We HAVE to be polite"